The present disclosure relates in general to systems and methodologies for providing live feedback during the development of workflows. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to systems and methodologies for allowing multiple workflow authors to collaborate on the design of workflows and simulate the execution of workflows during the development thereof.
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps wherein each step follows without delay or gap and ends just before the subsequent step may begin. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person or group, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. A workflow may be seen as a model that represents real work. For control purposes, a workflow may be a view of real work in a chosen aspect, thus serving as a virtual representation of actual work. The flow being described may refer to a document or product that is being transferred from one step to another.
Because workflows may be used to model a wide variety of situations, many of which are extremely complex, the development of workflows can easily become difficult, time consuming and inefficient. For example, it can be difficult, time consuming and inefficient to test the results of a newly developed workflow during development, collaborate with multiple authors to develop, update and evolve workflows over time, and generally provide assistance to workflow authors in addressing the various decision points and/or problems they encounter during workflow development.